Mixed-Race Youths Found More Prone To School Troubles

Students from more than one racial background are more likely than
their single-race peers to experience trouble in school, such as
repeating a grade, skipping school, and being suspended, a new study
shows.

The study of 90,000 middle and high school students found that
mixed-race youths also have a higher risk of health or behavior
problems than teenagers of a single race. The study, which combined
surveys and follow-up interviews with some students, found that all
mixed-race students were more likely to report smoking, drinking,
feeling depressed, having access to guns, and engaging in sexual
activity.

"Overall, the pattern is overwhelming," said J. Richard Udry, the
lead author of the study, "Health and Behavior Risks of Adolescents
with Mixed-Race Identity," which will be published in this month's
issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

But Mr. Udry, a professor of maternal and child health at the
University of North Carolina's school of public health, cautioned that
the study does not examine the causes of mixed-race students' problems.
One possible reason, he said, could be stress.

The needs of mixed-race students are more likely to be ignored than
those of their single-race classmates, said Pedro A. Noguera, a
visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Especially in schools that have strong racially defined groups,
multiracial students can find themselves in "borderland," he said,
without feeling that they belong.

"In a lot of school districts, these kids are invisible," Mr.
Noguera said, noting that many schools don't yet collect data about
multiracial students.

In the 2000 U.S. Census, 2.86 million children under the age of 18
were identified as multiracial, out of a total of 6.8 million people of
mixed race. More than 281 million people live in the United
States.

Self-Reports

The data collected for the study were drawn from the National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, known as Add Health, a
nationally representative, school- based probability sample of American
students in grades 7-12 during 1994 and 1995. Mr. Udry is the principal
investigator for that study at the Carolina Population Center, located
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

What makes the study of multiracial students unique was that
students reported their races without referring to their parents'
races, Mr. Udry said. Students responded to surveys at school; some of
those same students were later interviewed at home.

How students perceive themselves racially at school can differ
greatly from how they view their own racial identities at home with
their parents, Mr. Udry said. Some students, in fact, changed their
racial identities during the course of the study.

The study found that multiracial students who identified themselves
as black, along with another race, were more likely to skip school for
10 days and to be suspended, than their black classmates. Mixed-raced
students with Asian heritage were more likely to skip school, be
suspended, and repeat a grade than their Asian-only peers.

No one racial-identity combination in the study—which included
black, Asian, white, and American Indian—seemed to place
adolescents at greater risk, Mr. Udry said.

Because "Hispanic" refers to ethnicity, not race, that
classification was not included.

In academic performance, multiracial students generally fell between
the students who shared part of their racial identity.

About 24 percent of students who identified themselves as black and
white, for example, reported that they earned a "high GPA," compared
with 32 percent of white students and 15 percent of black students.

Educators should consider the study's findings as more people
identify themselves as mixed-race, said Matt Kelley, the founder and
president of the MAVIN Foundation, a Seattle-based national advocacy
and resource organization for multiracial people. In California,
Oregon, and Washington state, he said, more multiracial babies are
being born than babies of any race other than white.

Society's Role

Ed Taylor, an associate professor of education at the University of
Washington in Seattle whose research focuses on racial-identity
development, said one of the greatest challenges that teachers face is
providing children "with an accurate representation of the multiracial
society that we truly are."

Researchers and educators should be cautious when interpreting the
causes of struggles experienced by multiracial children, said Francis
Wardle, the co-author of Meeting the Needs of Multiethnic and
Multiracial Children in Schools, published last month by Allyn
& Bacon/Longman.

"It has nothing to do with [multiracial children's] sense of who
they are, but society's sense of who they are," said Mr. Wardle, who is
the father of four biracial children.

Multiracial students often are harassed by single-race peers who
pressure them to choose one identity, Mr. Wardle said. He added that
some counselors and psychologists falsely assume, however, that any
problem that a multiracial child experiences is linked to his or her
self-identity.

Mr. Kelley, who is Korean and white, said he could personally relate
to the stress inferred from the findings of the study of mixed-race
students.

"It's the reality of living in a society that still tries to
pigeonhole people, and particularly children, into one specific
category," he said.

Although the 2000 Census allowed respondents to choose more than one
race, many schools and districts still don't collect data in a way that
allows mixed-race students to identify themselves, Mr. Kelley said.

Maria P.P. Root, a Seattle-based psychologist and a noted author of
books and studies about multiracial people, said mixed-race students
may experience more stress, but how that translates into harmful
behavior such as criminal activity or dropping out of school is
unclear.

"Being mixed-race, in and of itself, is not a stressful experience,"
she said. "It's people's reactions that are stressful. It's society
that's creating the stress."

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